Entries tagged with cp

Four days and three nights passed before Cadmus’ house went quiet. Out of desperation, Flint had resorted to Vampirising his fellow rats, as he waited for his chance to flee the Plenipotentiary’s lair. It was shoddy cuisine, but desperation made the blood taste much better than it actually did.

Even though the place had fallen silent, Flint was more than a little frightened that Cadmus was still present and waiting for him to attempt an escape. If Cadmus was a master of one thing, it was absolute stillness. Flint had never been more afraid in his life, truth be told, and that fright conflicted with his impulse to flee immediately. He fought the urge, however, knowing that it was all too likely that Cadmus was waiting silently for Flint to reveal himself so that he could sacrifice the young vagabond Vampire to his Harming Tree.

He could sense the sun sinking beyond the mouldy stone walls of his dungeon hide-out and decided to give the silence one that night and the following day before he attempted to spirit himself away from the hidden keep. After draining another rat, Flint slept, curled up in amongst his living brothers, but still shivering from cold and trepidation.

For most Vampires, patience was something that came with the territory of immortality. Waiting for anything was like blinking your eyes in the scheme of things. It all passed so quickly, the endlessness and variety.

For Flint, however, patience had always run thin. Although he almost always was of a mind to shrug off the world and walk his own vagrant path, waiting for anything he wanted or enduring any situation that was not ideal to his whims of the moment were both nigh untenable, especially if he did not have anything else to busy his mind whilst forced to exercise a virtue that simply was not part of his make-up.

Flint opened one beady rat eye and glared at his brothers, who all seemed content in the deep crevice shared by the colony. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic and irritable. It had been 24 hours and, still, the keep was silent as death. Raising his nose, Flint sniffed the stagnant air, and caught no scent of the Dark Child of Night. Cadmus had to be gone. This could be Flint’s only chance to escape the horrors of his killing ground.

Rising from the dank floor, Flint stretched, emerging from the ancient gash in the stone wall. Instantly, he became his human form once more, immediately crouching in a defensive position. You just could not be too careful with a creature like Cadmus Pariah. His powers were boggling, and Flint felt he had been nothing more than lucky to have escaped the Plenipotentiary’s lethal wrath for this long.

(playing around with this because 'Starwatcher' is on the computer that's currently in the hospital)

Rarely did Cadmus haunt the hallowed halls of the pseudo Goth club The Poison Rose these days. He had always appreciated the symmetry to the club's names, a fragile representation of every nuance Creation could muster within its delicate petals, so very fraught with the promise of an irreversible finalisation. Somehow, the two fit perfectly together, bound in a waltz that could certainly spin for the eternity perceived by those incapable of understanding what true eternity was in all it all its terrifying connotation.

This time Marlow greeted him at the door, his immediately supplication to the silent Vampire evidenced in every subtle nuance of his body, right down to the involuntary twitching of that of a teen turned youth, so every eager to please at any cost.

And cost it would indeed, scoffed Cadmus Pariah, studying this young man whose every fibre already belonged to him without any question whatsoever.

"I will have both - "

But the Pariah was interrupted by this upstart. "Oh oh, yeah, the owner said that nothing was too good for the famed Cadmus Pariah. I - I know about you, though I've never had the honour to actually meet you. You're like our night club's very own royalty."

Leaning into Marlow, his aquiline Elder's nose against the rancid moisture's bursting through the human one, Cadmus gritted his teeth with unbridled disgust.

"I built this club on the blood and bones of those such as you," he whispered, his voice more a thought lost to the din of the club's music. "Long after the maggots have made their lurid meal of your eyeballs deep within the Earth, The Poison Rose will dance and sing, and worship, and celebrate the Blessed Dark...all in my name. No kindly announcement need be made of this most secret and sacred court that shall be held tonight. I hunger for blood, I hunger for flight, I hunger for that which both bring a seemingly endless bounty of wonder. But what I hunger for most is the look of shock on the faces of those realising that at the very end, they were nothing but meat for the beast, inescapable in their rhapsody at the moment of death, when one gives over to that from which there is no hope, no escape. Now, run along little rodent. Bring the throng to me, there's a good one, that's a good lad."

Dear Lady, I can't believe I didn't post this here, but I can't find it, so apparently I did not. Bruce sent me the song "Phoenician" by Stic Basin. It's an early recording featuring Bruce, Barry, and Carlo Ascitutti. The later tracks are pretty much only Barry. Anyway, my first thought was Cadmus. Because the "historical" Cadmus was a Phoenician. Since this was a Barry-centric song, of course I went down that path and came up with this.

It's really quite a lovely song, so unlike "Pin."

Anyway, I garnered a discussion between the three of them, but this one was directed particularly at me, from Carlo. It was fascinating, and so well-told.

"Escaping the tyranny of her own Country, Elissa, an exiled princess of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, the future Carthaginian Queen Dido, commonly known as Alissar, founded Carthage, the "shining city" that ruled the Phoenician world. Princess Elissa was the daughter of King Matten of Tyre (also known as Muttoial or Belus II). When he died, the throne was jointly bequeathed to her and her brother, Pygmalion. She married her uncle Acherbas (also known as Sychaeus), the High Priest of Melqart, a man with both authority and wealth comparable to the king. This led to increased rivalry between religion and the monarchy. Pygmalion was a tyrant, lover of both gold and intrigue, who desired the authority and fortune enjoyed by Acherbas. Pygmalion assassinated Acherbas in the temple and kept the misdeed concealed from his sister for a long time, deceiving her with lies about her husband's death. At the same time, the people of Tyre called for a single sovereign, causing dissent within the royal family. Phoenician, a Canaanite caretaker previously working for King Pygmalion of Tyre, decided to move his residence to the mythical Carthage. He also decided that, after so many years endlessly spent caretaking, he deservedly needed a loving bosom where he could comfortably rest his tyred body, i.e. a woman to cuddle, fondle and canoodle. Not being satisfied with one, and wisely knowing that a bird in the hand is worth three in the bush, he fell in love with the whole lot of them : Elissa, Dido and Alissar. As a result of too much stress and too much tyring caused by intensive physical labour, Elissa died. And with her, the other two readily followed. Although some contemporary historians, as well as many modern scholars, think it might well be a typical Punic exaggeration, Phoenician, allegedly, cried so much for the loss of the threesome that his tears increased the level of the whole Mediterranean Sea. (Legend has it that he might also have overflooded the Black Sea because of tears leaking through a strange hole in Costantinople). Shocked, stunned and shattered by unbearable grief, Phoenician moved back to Tyre and decided to retyre. All the rest is History. The song "Phoenician" is a dirge built on this sad and true story centred on such a legendary and caretaking hero. A Threnody, a Requiem, a Jeremiad, a Coronach, a Lament and an Elegy will be offered shortly. Thee Caretakers will stay tuned to this Frequency for more happy-sing-a-long songs."

I replied with: Love how you tell this story. And..."A Threnody, a Requiem, a Jeremiad, a Coronach, a Lament and an Elegy will be offered shortly. Thee Caretakers will stay tuned to this Frequency for more happy-sing-a-long songs." This is heartening to hear, being the carefree soul that I am. ;P

Of course, for me, it will always be for my primary Phoenician.

"May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was who invented books." ~ Thomas Carlyle

I've probably mentioned this, but one of the reasons I believe Tom Hardy would make the perfect Cadmus is his proclivity for giving 'The Crazy Eye' in every movie I've seen him in. When janalyson and I went to see This Means War, I contended that Hardy wouldn't get through the movie without giving THE EYE at least once, even though this was a romantic comedy. I think he did it twice in this film, if I'm not mistaken, but here's concrete proof that he did it at least once. Chris Pine died shortly after this scene. Oh, and if Tom Hardy is 5'10", then Chris Pine isn't 6'1", he's 9' tall. And that's all I'm gonna say about that...

Yes, I am still writing. No, this has not been proofread/edited. I still wanted to put it here, in a kind of commemoration. It seems that the emotion for this particular Harming Tree short story is going to be lust, and that's why the words are coming so slowly, so fraught with difficulty. Lust is such an alien emotion, even to Cadmus, who is so endowed with the entrapments of both human and Vampire after the Augury incident. I just have a problem with emotion" when it comes to Cadmus, especially anything bordering on love or the entrapments of the physical body. Still, it has to be done if any sort of realism is to be brought to the character. Anyway, here's the continuance of the story I'm currently and will probably continue calling The Star Watcher.( Cadmus meets Litania )

It's very seldom that a character I write about proves to have a will of its own. In fact when I hear authors claim such things I tend to.....roll my eyes.Well,I was wrong.A character called Preyer Kry ,who has been waiting in the wings of ABARAT until the fourth volume has just kicked this author very hard....and once he had my attention made a full list of THE SINS OF PREYER KRY.I am now going to sit and give thanks to the deity who made Kry.It wasn't me.

Righto, I'm posting this for the Tom Hardy fans here. Although I'm all about me some homo-erotic photies, this is really kind of disturbing, because Cadmus Pariah would never ever assume this position. He would slaughter everyone before doing this. Well, he would slaughter everyone anyway, but the character is just too dominant to be a bottom. Anyway, for all you Hardy aficionados, this picture may be sure to make your heads explode. You're welcome.

"To purge himself of the taint of the human herds with whom he reluctantly interacted, the Dark Chylde of Night would make a yearly pilgrimage to the Mojave Desert to commune with the sparse life of that exquisite wasteland, and to test himself before the merciless light of day."

"“I am Cadmus, called also Pariah. I am the Child of Night, born of Kelat and Thiyennen, and was once an agent of the Apostate. I killed the man whose body you seem so keen on digging up tonight.”"

"“I am Cadmus,” the Dark Chylde of Night replied, his voice caressing the night with a velvet sonorousness. “Known also as Pariah.”"

I'm trying to get my ducks in a row, gathering up various pictures acook will need for reference, as well as writing up what I envision for the cover of The Augury of Gideon. Then I'm going to tackle some other publishing mountains before me. That aside, though, I found this picture, and it perfectly represents the innocence that defines Faust/Kallum. Scottles is the other half of the Faust/Kallum character, but the picture that best defines that is not published and I'm not gonna be responsible for doing that now. Anyways, here's the James McAvoy picture.

Gotta get this, the Scottles picture, and the picture of B that best represents Cadmus in the third book (I have the perfect one), along with a picture of the actual Augury, and a written description of what I'm seeing, and we'll be good to go. ::crosses fingers::

After having finally gotten Word back, I was able to really trawl through The Waltham Phantom and see the mistakes and omissions I had made. I've set to righting those wrongs by, essentially, making part of the story more wrong. The most changed is the last part of Gareth Owen's final terrifying hours on Earth. I wanted to make it as profane as possible, in order to bring out the proper rise in Flint. He is, after all, a bit of an insouciant individual, and I felt that the story of his friend's murder and subsequent defilement did not go far enough, especially since we're talking about Cadmus' handiwork here. So here is the first edit of that particular part of the story.

“I forced my fingers into Gareth's mouth, holding him still whilst taking my favourite knife, the one made from my dragon matrice's claw, out of the belt beneath my robes. So very slowly, which is the only way to do things such as this, if you want the blood to hold its gamey essence, I let the sharp point of the black claw slip into the aged flesh of your dearest mortal, my sweet Flint. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face, despite his already knowing that I was going to slaughter him. They never quite believe it, neither mortals nor Vampires, until you begin to take the life they had always assumed was their own away from them, one heartbeat's worth of blood at a time. He gasped for the breath he could not catch, with his throat so open to the air, and he moaned deep within the secret cavities of his chest as I let him bleed into my chalice.

“When the flow ebbed, slowing to a hearty trickle, I decided to let that remaining blood waste into the Earth. Turning the body of Gareth Owen upside down, I plunged an iron spike through the cooling meat's ankles and into the pike I had erected. I then finished its decapitation with my claw knife, and I secured the head to the top of the wooden post.”

Once more, Cadmus paused, letting a genuine smile spread grace his lush mouth, making his face shimmer in the moonlight like icy starshine behind a veil of thin clouds. He pulled the air in quickly through the nostrils of his patrician nose and he looked down at his captive audience.

Continuing, Cadmus purred the last of the cruel tale. “But I wasn’t finished exacting sacred atrocities upon this nonentity’s flesh. Oh no. I found a nearby branch and affixed it to the base of the pike and, taking Owen’s arms, I tied them to the ends of the rotting wood. He was a veritable English Saint Peter, he was. And I should know…my former master arranged for that apocryphal Jewish dissident to endure the profanities of reverse crucifixion. Despite what you may have been taught in whatever religious past you might have, it wasn’t Peter’s idea, that. It was all the Apostate, may his dessicated ashes never light in peace. At least you can take comfort, my odd little friend, that your mortal blood brother was quite dead when I strung him up like the meat that he was. Oh, and the way he looked hanging there, softly swaying in the cool country breeze! It was indeed a work of art, Flint. A true piece de resistance even for one so skilled as me. Moments such as these are the reason memories, and Polaroids, are made…to capture in the full magnificence of time that which might forever otherwise be lost.”

Cadmus allowed himself another small smile in mock honour of Gareth's gory memory, and in reaction to Flint's increasing anger. He lightly caressed Flint's cheek with his blanched fingers, enjoying the reprehension his act of pretend affection elicited. Looking down at his frozen charge, Cadmus wondered at the horror he found there, his expression filled with an angelic grace that was in no wise pretense.

“As I said, he was long past dead, by then, dear Flint. Long past it indeed. But the reflection in his drying eyes held a distant recollection of his most cherished friend, that of the Waltham Phantom, the soul he had all but given up in the last moments of his brief and sad wee life. The only thing he had not divulged was the name of the Phantom; however, had I found it important enough to do a little detective work, I would have easily discovered the name of 'Simon Flynt,' and followed the warm trail straight to your doorstep.”

I haven't abandoned this project. It's just taking me longer than expected, basically because I haven't been doing anything important lately, for obvious reasons. Anyway, here's the latest development. I only have to pencil in the skin tone and the Basin of Blue Flame, and the piece will be finished, unless I decide to do some sort of background for it. I doubt I will, though. It's been so long since I've done any serious art, I'm afraid I'll screw this up if I go too far. Anyway, here's what I have so far.

It seems that the more depressed I get in real life, the more manic I become online to try to counteract it all. The past couple of days have been pretty bad, with missing Aunt Tudi terribly, reliving all my regrets about her, and being completely alone here in the house, in utter silence. I have been so lonely, and so lost.

Then, every time I'd feel the tears welling up, I'd throw myself into cyberspace and write anything, everything, even if it didn't need writing. And I'd seek out pictures and post them constantly on Facebook. And I would obsess over everything.

I see myself being pulled to those things and people that have comforted me in the past, when no one and nothing else could. And my focus would be diamond-sharp. It's been scary of late, but these are the only things I can think about. I grasp desperately for these sources of solace, and I find myself trying to take everyone along with me, despite their probably being sick of me and my insanity.

And then there's Cadmus. My one great tormentor, my demon child, has suddenly become a safe and familiar haven. This entity that's filled with rage and hatred, so capable of unspeakable cruelty, always eager to take the road that will bring him closer to the dark matter of the spirit...I am running to him for some sort of sanctity and reason in my life.

What does that even mean?

All I know, is that I'm woeful, my sleep patterns (as if I had any) are flipped inside out, and I'm...well, I'm serenading monsters, quietly seething. I don't want to cry anymore. I want to laugh in the face of all of it, and come out the other end as unscathed as I can be. I'm tired of grieving and regretting. If I don't stop it, I may just succumb to the void that is my mind-child. Only the Mighties know what I'd be capable of then, what lengths I would go to, to achieve some sort of peace in my world.

Far off galaxies were reflected, spiralling in the depths of Cadmus Pariah's obsidian eyes. He blinked slowly, allowing himself to go ever further outward into the cosmos, reaching out spidery tendrils of ancestral memory, where his ancestors had taken their first breath and sung their first songs of Creation. Across the multiverse he travelled, taking in each galaxy and naming it according to the ancient Tarmian ways. And he pulled to him the presence of the black hole at the center of each heavenly body, that inevitable dark matter that was the source of the life that chose to ignore its origins. Black holes were the realm of the Pariah. Surely the songs pulled into their ineluctable gravity fortified their existence, forging the event horizon that was the only indication of their presence amongst the vibrations of the living stars. It was at these times that Cadmus grasped at his philosophical apices only to realise that he could actually feel wonder and amazement without the assistance of his long-gone beautiful pets.

He shuddered in reaction to the moisture that pooled around his endless irises. Such emotion presented a kind of terror in Cadmus. He was wholly unsure what to do with it, and so he fought it with every fibre of his being.

He blinked again, his heavy lids resting at half-mast as he absorbed the light around him. The blessed dark would always be his primary realm, that rhapsody in which he could touch eternity by gazing into the impossibly ancient stars, and the dark matter that suspended them in time.

From an extensive biography of Tim Roth: So Roth, disturbed by his father's departure, now living in the company of artistic females, was sent into this macho hell-hole. Being short (his nickname was Titch) and named Timothy only made it worse. The bullying was bad and Roth had no physical response.

Cadmus calls Flint this because he is familiar with British slang, having lived amongst the English for centuries. Flint hates the cognomen, and takes it as the insult Cadmus intends it to be.

See, everything is there for a reason. I'm just glad that The Waltham Phantom has been exorcised...for now~.

I've just finished a Cadmus story, but he is demanding more words. This is one of the reasons why I was awake all night. His vicious demands are incessant, and I wish there were some way I could silence his diabolical purr. Sometimes I get weary of the dreadful imagery that haunts my head. The thing I find most distressing is that this is a large aspect of who I am. I have no idea how I ended up with a morbid fascination with insane violence and unimaginable abuse. I always return to the visions of vivisection. Cadmus basks in what he perceives to be incredibly beautiful, to rip apart a Vampire and allow him to heal, just so he can do it again. What kind of deviance do I harbour, that I can immerse in such darkness? Sometimes I feel as if I'm going mad.

He spent the night in the cinema house, slipping effortlessly into a small brown rat, one of many of them that the clean-up crew would probably see. After a very productive night of watching a compelling movie, he also supped on a luscious female, who was all too happy to share with Flint the needed nectar from her veins. Spying up from across the aisle, the woman could not watch the movie for stealing more glances with every passing minute. By the time the film was halfway finished, Flint had also lost interest and was sitting next to his new admirer. It wasn't every night that the unassuming Darkling could attract a human without using an almost uncomfortably level of Glamour. He just really didn't have it in him to be naturally irresistible. So when such a opportunity presented itself, Flint always gladly took advantage of it. It would mean that he wouldn't have to kill to eat this night; rather, he could take all the blood he needed and all the pleasure he may want without the inconvenience of having his prey realise what he was doing, and begin an angry protest. Flint just could not be sussed with such, and would bring their lovely little encounter to a close by affixing his mouth to the throat of the unwilling before him, and draw out all the blood, taking the lifeless husk to his favourite hill above Tinsel Town. It was just a pain in the arse, really, and there was no bonus of intimacy to be had, just food.

Flint liked the company of humanity, even if the attentions were brief. He preferred them that way, as oftentimes, the brief encounters were the most intense. For instance, in a dark movie house, surrounded by other people, to bring a person to the desired orgasm for the best effect of taking blood was a feat that Flint was more then ready to attempt. He liked challenges like that, and Flint was not prone to do much of anything that he did not fully enjoy.

And the afterglow from this one...well, it had been more than satisfactory for them both. Blood was enough to bring a Vampire to climax, particularly the Incubi and Succubi of the Darkblood Hive. But to have a human do what this woman did to him after the fact was nothing short of extraordinary. They both floated in one another's orbits, reaching levels of pleasure rarely experienced, especially in public and particularly in utter silence. The happy lassie had left quite fulfilled, but also left Flint profoundly spent.

There are just way too many delish pictures that can be 'shopped to represent Flint. Here are just three, one of which portrays both Flint and his dearest friend Gareth.

Gareth and Flint were the closest of friends. Extremely close. It is because of Gareth's murder that Flint is now hellbent on killing Cadmus Pariah. That's a pretty lofty goal, but Flint isn't known for setting limitations on himself.

I love how the phosphorescence in his eyes is made all the more intense in black & white photographs. 'Tis mesmerising.

"The Waltham Phantom" is complete! At least the first draft, anyway. Flint survives his encounter with Cadmus, which is nothing short of miraculous, and I survived writing it so that this happens. Cadmus is fairly ticked, and I'd say he'd get over it, but Cadmus holds grudges. He'll demand some souvenirs for his Harming Tree. I won't get off this easy. For now, though, I can let rest my restless rat man, and build upon the next story, this time allowing Cadmus free rein to wreak as much havoc as he wishes.

Starling Murmuration and Toroidal Vortices are, by language default, the exclusive realm of Barry Andrews...or at least they should be.

But noooooooo... Murmuration apparently appears in profound ways in the movie Skellig...and I saw it like a day after I made the Illuminati video for 'Walking on the Wind,' aaaaannndddd toroidal vortices, the focus I made for 'Sea Theory' the pre-Shriek alternate version by Barry Andrews, are also called smoke rings, which can be seen HERE, being made by Tim Roth.

The very phrase, TOROIDAL VORTICES, belongs to the realm of Andrews. How could it not?

Is it any wonder why Cadmus wants to wipe the Earth clean of Flint? Hell, I want to! It's fucking my shit up, these connections. Stop it already.

Earlier today, I heard a snippet of music that just set my skin on fire. It turned out to be 'Lux Aeterna' by Clint Mansell. I went looking for it, found it, downloaded it, and have pretty much been listening to it nonstop for the past 2.5 hours. It has been a major driving force the the Waltham Phantom narrative, allowing Cadmus to be as emotionally cruel as he possibly can be to wee Flint. I've been basking in the glory and wishing there were some way to just euthanise the younger Vampire and be done with the Flint arc.

Then... a few minutes ago on Tumblr, I was sent the link to this video on You Tube, seeing as how my Tumblr is You Tube oriented. It's 'Lux Aeterna.' I am not fucking amused by this. God is just ramping up the abuse, I swear.

Did I mention, not fucking amused? Just wanted to make sure I got that in there.

A very appropriate line, given my issues with "The Waltham Phantom" (the Cadmus/Flint short) and Flint himself. He is pretty well pissing me right off with his insubordination to Cadmus, along with his overly-active sense of irreverence. And now the bastard is writing himself. The only character who has ever done that has been Cadmus Pariah. Having two autonomous creations in my head is pretty much a recipe for utter madness. Anyway...the line.

"There the insolent rat is subdued and is stricken and shaken."

Yeah, that. That all over the damned place. Why? This is why...

“You and I,” Cadmus said, his voice one of dead silence scattered amongst the lilies and dry leaves. “We are cut from the same cloth in many ways.”

“How...do you figure?”

Cadmus moved his head away from Flint, and averted his eyes back, giving Flint a sidewise glance that had the perfectly desired effect. Flint could not stop looking at him, so enthralled he was with the beatific Pariah.

“Well, Flint, it seems that you and I are the only Vampires to walk this Vale of Tears, who can mask our passing from others of our tribe. Only the very special can do this and, apparently, I am not the only one, when all this time, I thought that I was. This is a monumental discovery, my Absinthe-eyed friend.”

Flint smiled widely. “That was what he called me, the Vampire who brought me over.”

“Absinthe?”

“Yeah.”

“And you did not keep the name. Why is this?”

Flint shrugged. “I preferred my own.”

“Flint.”

“Well, Simon Flynt, to be honest. But it just morphed into Flint in these contemporary times.”

Cadmus could not wrap his mind around this ridiculous Vampire. He tried very hard to mask the emotions that spilled over when he least expected them.

“So, you are telling me that you have not truly changed your name in over six...hundred...years...? And you abandoned a perfectly good name aligning yourself with a perfectly wondrous drug for this common little cognomen with which you were born into mortality?”

Cadmus felt his grasp of his Glamour slip a little, and saw Flint lean away from him, unsure as to what the Plenipotentiary was going to do. The hint of anger in the Pariah's voice disconcerted him enough to shake the unquestioning desire stabbing at his heart, if only for a few seconds. This was a dangerous creature, Flint surmised, and he must be very careful indeed.

But it was only a brief moment of hesitance before Flint was back in the throes of desire, sitting on this tree branch with the greatest of all the Darklings who still walked the Earth.

Cadmus had returned to his regal state of imperviousness, exuding every shred of Glamour he could muster on Flint without killing him with the enormity of it all. Flint seemed drunk from the effect...until he reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out an almost broken cigarette, popped it between his lips, and lit it with an equally bent match.

Cadmus did not know what to think of this. Flint should have been nigh to paralysed by Cadmus' magickal attentions. He knitted his brow and pursed his lips, watching the younger Vampire take a long drag off the scraggly fag. Flint cut his eyes back to Cadmus, full-on love shining in their strange greenness, and he said, “One of the great things about being a Vampire is you can abuse your body all you want and nothing ever affects it. You can smoke ten packs a day, and your lungs will remain like two pretty pink roses in your ribcage!”

The Dark Chylde of Night closed his endless eyes and pulled a deep breath, taking in the secondhand smoke along with the long gulps of oxygen he craved to calm his fury. What madman had turned this person to the night? Cadmus danced on the edge of desperation to know, so he could go murder him, if he were in fact still alive.

I'm watching this movie right now, and it's probably the most insane representation of Flint I have seen to date. I mean, seriously, the hair even? Jesus fucking christ! And, I'm sorry, but Tim Roth just doesn't do a completely convincing American accent. Well, I take that back. He's pretty good with a drawl, but I've noticed a lot of Brits seem to be more comfortable with a Southern accent than with a contemporary American accent.

In other related news, I got my DVD player back to working. This makes me very pleased. Watching DVDs on the computer sucks big hairy donkey balls.

In other less-related news, I was planning on writing all day, but ended up driving to Greenville on a lark, as is documented in a previous post. While I was out, though, I got some Baileys for mah coffee, but I may have to imbibe a tad tonight and see what happens with the Cadmus/Flint narrative. Cadmus is fairly pissed off in my head right now, and I need to exorcise the demon before he takes me over, like so many times in the past.

...actually, I remember now. The last pub we went to, the one where the picture that shows up in 'Contract Song' was taken, I had switched from Guinness to Baileys because I was still fairly freaked right the fuck out. How ironic that this is my drink of choice as I play around with the drunken Celtic writer persona.

Why, Barry? WHY?

So, I'm off to finished this damned movie (I hate Bridget Fonda...married to Danny Elfman, kissing all over a lanky-haired Roth. I should be so lucky...) and take up the virtual quill before Cadmus crawls out of my head and murders me.

Taken, respectively, from Skellig: the Owl Man and The Legend of 1900 (which has always been one of my favourite movies, not just TR movies, but all-time movies. The Father Unit bought it for me ages ago because he knew how I felt about pianists. So this is like porn for me.)

Enjoy! And, if you have any Tutorial ideas, don't be shy. If I can make it (barring not being able to find the video footage), I will, jes' for you.

Off for more writing. The tale is fleshing out nicely, and I think I've figured out what keeps Flint alive. And it really pisses Cadmus off. I'm loving being able to allow Cadmus full-blown emotions now, although he's letting the cat out of the bag about his real-life parents as a result. That's okay.

It's one of those strange sort of occurrences that makes a thing undeniable. This song has been on my iPod(s) for like a thousand years, but it rarely comes up. When I started hunting for Archibald videos, and was mostly sorely disappointed, I found a video that used the song and was "Well, how about that? Coldplay and Cunningham, what an odd combination." And I thought nothing of it anymore. That's been a couple or three months ago. Again, I forgot about the song.

Then today, about an hour ago while I was walking and listening to Froderick, the song came up again, and I started listening to the song, and BOOM, it was transferred from being "just Coldplay" or "just a song used in an Archibald video," because really Flint is absolutely nothing like Archie, who would kill everyone within a twenty-mile radius if given half a chance (much like Cadmus), it became a "shiiiite, that's upbeat with a que sera sera sort of vibe, but still talking about a 'then and now' situation...Flint!" And the title itself pretty much describes Flint's philosophy ~ Viva La Vida, live the life.

Now, there's no doubt I have to keep the little bugger around, denying Cadmus his midnight snack...and honestly, in the scheme of things, Flint wouldn't be much more to Cadmus than a snack.

So here are the lyrics, the Flintian bits in bold. Following that is the proper Coldplay video, then the Archie video that I saw a while back, just for the hell of it.

I used to rule the worldSeas would rise when I gave the wordNow in the morning I sleep aloneSweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the diceFeel the fear in my enemy's eyesListen as the crowd would sing"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the keyNext the walls were closed on meAnd I discovered that my castles standUpon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringingRoman Cavalry choirs are singingBe my mirror, my sword and shieldMy missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explainOnce you go there was neverNever an honest wordAnd that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild windBlew down the doors to let me inShattered windows and the sound of drumsPeople couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries waitFor my head on a silver plateJust a puppet on a lonely stringOh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringingRoman Cavalry choirs are singingBe my mirror, my sword and shieldMy missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explainI know Saint Peter won't call my nameNever an honest wordBut that was when I ruled the world

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringingRoman Cavalry choirs are singingBe my mirror, my sword and shieldMy missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explainI know Saint Peter won't call my nameNever an honest wordBut that was when I ruled the world

Very briefly, the story behind this is, since Cadmus was essentially the Apostate's only child, but also the child of Tarmi, the Apostate wished to pass on to him the Mysteries of the Colleges of Khemeth. He didn't need to do this at all, considering Cadmus was more than well-equipped to serve the purpose of his creation; to kill Vampires. The Dark Chylde of Night was also taught Roman Mysteries by his cruel master, Nissius, so he was already well-versed in many Magicks.

But they were not the Egyptian Mysteries, the secrets of the chambers far beneath the pyramids. So the Apostate laid his hands upon and within the vivisected Cadmus and passed all that he was into his alchemical son. And it drove Cadmus to brink of madness, and perhaps a little bit beyond.

After he healed and and wandered the subterranean chambers underneath the Holy See, Cadmus grew into his Egyptian heritage, both through the Khemethian Tarmi and the alchemies of one of the greatest Magi of Khemeth, the man who would become the Apostate.

So... What Maria/Eve saw when she was pulled into the waking dreams of Cadmus in The Chalice was the cellular and Magickal roots of the Abomination.

The picture, which will eventually be coloured and very-lightly shadowed, is meant to be the earliest-known artistic representation of Cadmus Pariah, done in the tradition of the hieroglyphs and renderings found within the pyramids. The work was ordered to be created in fresco style on the ceiling of one of the more dreadful ritual chambers maintained below the Vatican by the Apostate. It shows Cadmus as he was when he came to the Apostate after his long tribulation at the hands of Nissius. He still very much had the Mark of the Elven upon him, and had never cut his hair. The Apostate decked him in traditional Tarmian garb and bade him hold the Basin of Blue Flame for the fresco to be created.

As you can see, Cadmus' hair was black, as were always his eyes. The eyes are intentionally light-free, since Cadmus absorbed the light around him, rather than reflecting it outward to exhibit his soul. Only after he becomes a true Vampire does he begin to have light shine in his eyes. The nails are also black. This harks back to that same story of Maria, where she notices that both his finger and toe nails are painted black. This is something Cadmus has always done. There's really no reason for it, except I just think it's dangerously decadent and deviant. Ha!

It's the beginning of another Cadmus short story that may or may not show up in 'The Harming Tree' simply because I don't really want to kill the Vampire that Cadmus encounters in this one. I still haven't figured out how Flint will actually survive meeting Cadmus so, if he doesn't, the story will go into 'The Harming Tree' anthology. If he does, well, I don't know what I'll do with it. This is the rough draft of part of what I have so far, introducing Flint, a Darkblood Vampire.Flint let his large hazel eyes dance across the endless stream of Los Angeles traffic as he sat on a high hill that was one of the more secluded spots just outside the city. There had been quite a few bodies found on this very spot, which would have given him a case of the creeps if he had not been guilty of placing a couple of bodies there himself.

An almost sentient went blew across Flint's face, making his long dark-blonde hair tickle his high cheeks and worry his fluttering eyelids. He absently brushed the hair away, waiting...watching... The lights of the city below him reflected in his eyes, making them ripple into a phosphorescent malachite strangeness before returning to the more human hazel. It was his eyes that gave him away to humans as being something other than they, and to Vampires as being one of their own.

But Flint was a kind of aberration in the New Hive. He was several hundred years old and had never transformed anyone into a Vampire. It wasn't because he was a Redemptor, which he was not. He simply had never really thought about it. And he had never encountered anyone else he wanted to take that kind of responsibility for. There was that oddness, and there was his name. The Vampire who had transformed him had named him Absinthe because of the odd effect his eyes displayed upon coming into the Hive, but he did not keep it; instead, he reverted back to his mortal name of Simon Flynt, and then modernised it decades later to the simple name by which he went today.

Flint.

Being ordinary in every way he could when he was essentially anything but made him irresistible to a wide range of potential food sources. It served him very well. Even though he preferred not to kill, mistakes did happen, but those mistakes were usually straight men who came to their so-called senses before Flint was finished with his meal, and tried to fight Flint off in some misguided attempt to reclaim some imagined gender-centric honour. Many of those men ended up right here on this dusty desert hill with their necks broken.

Thinking about it, Flint shrugged. He identified as straight...ish. Vampires really couldn't be bothered with mortal sexual hang-ups, but even when Flint was mortal, he simply just didn't care about trivial things like this. All of his mates, both mortal and Vampire, had been female, but it did not bother him to admire the male form or be admired by other males. His male-bonding bordered on the romantic simply because when Flint was fond of you, he was very very fond of you. And if he were not fond of you, you simply did not exist in his world.

If anyone has been following my tip-toe through movie-making land, then you won't be surprised by this next wee project. It really was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at editing a Shinzon movie, set to music used specifically for the writing of Cadmus. I tried to use all the choicest scenes to show how very perfect Hardy would be as the Pariah, but I think the end of the video pretty much speaks for itself. Enjoy, all you unlucky readers!

Working on the 'Eurydice' video today got me to thinking of how Orphaeus got his name. Originally his name was Cygnet, oddly named because Jack Skellington always put me in mind of a Gothic swan.

I had heard Danny Elfman sing before, but never like he did as Jack Skellington. His natural vibrato shining through on some of the loveliest songs ever composed finally pulled me over to The Elfmeister's way of thinking, so much so that a new Vampire was born in my head, belonging totally to Elfman in appearance and in talent. I named him Cygnet, because of my affiliating Jack Skellington with swans, and went to mapping down his origins and alignments. He was originally a party animal kind of Vampire, who also just happened to be one of the greatest singers and performance artists to have ever been born. He was of Austrian origins, being an opera singer in Vienna when he was turned. In modern times, he ran a cabaret in San Francisco and was a "family man," who just happened to have a big crazy party every single night of the week, welcoming both Vampires and humans.

Not long after A Nightmare of Christmas, Oingo Boingo released what was apparently their final studio album. This album boasted the song "Pedestrian Wolves," which would forever alter not only Cygnet, but also the entire Vampire Great Hive. "Pedestrian Wolves" created The Hive of the Beast, a sect within the Great Hive that was responsible for the legends of werewolves. These Vampires were masters at anubis, or shapeshifting, most usually shifting into wolves. They were the origins of the vicious Eastern European vrakshatha, who engaged in the rending and consumption of the flesh of their victims, as well as bathing in the blood they did not drink. Suddenly Cygnet was not as innocent as he had once been. The name of the Vampire was also suddenly quite precious.

So I set to rename the newly-crowned Prince of Beasts, but I wanted to keep him aligned with my beloved "Skellington Swan." It was then that the idea dawned on me that I could rename the character after the greatest musician of all time, Orpheus, whose constellation was Cygnus the Swan. It was perfect, since Cygnet was already a legendary singer. So I altered the spelling of the name a tad and Cygnet became Orphaeus Cygnus.

I so enjoyed writing this character, I found myself ignoring all the others, even Cadmus Pariah. I enjoyed the rest of 1994 and most of 1995 writing about my favourite party animal, and how he and his little family held fetes at their cabaret, and dined on one or two of their guests each night. It was during this time that Orphaeus adopted the serial killer's proclivity for taking souvenirs from his victims. To this day, the Swan still treasures his little leather bag of finger bones he has collected from his victims over the centuries. The two defining songs for Orphaeus became "Pedestrian Wolves" (of course) and the Oingo Boingo party anthem "No One Lives Forever." These allowed Orphaeus to be a monster, yet maintain a mischievous lovability despite his bestial nature.

But somewhere along the line, my demon child Cadmus began clamouring for my attention again, and I found the characters at odds with one another in my mind. Part of me wanted to stay in San Fran and party with the monsters, but the other bigger part of me was compelled to acquiesce to the dark demands of that singular monster who had upstaged all the other Vampires in my immortal pantheon. And so it was that the Pariah and the Swan became enemies. When the characters began battling for my attention, even though I wanted Orphaeus to win out, it was Cadmus who rose victorious. The battle for attention culminated in the scalping of Orphaeus, a vile act that became one of those sublime moments of Vampire legend in my head. It was only years later that the story of that scalping was ever properly told. The legend proper made it into the first book of The Vampire Relics.

Seven years after the birth of Cygnet, while I was still seeking out fellow Shriekback fans on the Internet, I was pointed in the direction of a website run by someone purportedly of interest to Shriekback fans. On the site was a link to another website called 'The Head of Orpheus,' which turned out to be a/the Russell Hoban fan site. Russell Hoban's works, particularly Riddley Walker, have been referred to by Barry Andrews as "Shriekback-required reading." The website I'd been directed to turned out to be a veil behind which Barry Andrews was hiding. He had been the one to link visitors to his site to The Head of Orpheus.

The irony of all that wasn't lost on me, given my characters' histories with their inspirations and one another. Of course, it was all just a little too strange for me too. Either way, it's what got me intrigued with Russell Hoban's works, not because the members of Shriekback suggested his writing, but because of the excerpts from the author's books found on The Head of Orpheus, especially from Pilgermann and The Medusa Frequency (which I quoted in the 'Eurydice' video, a quote using the voice of Eurydice, talking to her beloved Orpheus. It was that writing style I unabashedly tried to emulate when I began writing 'Sui Generis' about a year and a half later.

What's so funny is, Orphaeus Cygnus has never and will never anubis into a swan. That would just be too tame and serious for the likes of him. Cadmus would be more likely to shift into a swan, since he prefers birds (particularly the nighthawk) as his primary species into which to transform when he needs to employ anubis.

Ah, but Orphaeus possesses the ethereal beauty of the swan in his soul. When I look at his Cygnus alignment, I never fail to see Jack Skellington walking slowly up the curly hill, his thin, graceful form illuminated by the giant moon behind him. He will forever be my Gothic Swan, my Cygnet.

After the song of the Augury of was sung, the Great Hive was terribly decimated by the mortation and purging of the Vampires. Gone were the last Tarmi of the Hive of Purity, finally rejoining their brethren on the holy isle of Meybhelahn. With them went the only human to grace that hidden home since the Night of the Blood Moon. Eve had filled her destiny and was given her reward of sanctity, despite being Cadmus Pariah’s sacred garden of Blood. The Hive of Redemption collectively mortated back into the human population along with a number of Darklings of the Darkblood Hive. Most of the Tribe of the Tomb perished, finally being released from their crippling burdens. Those who were left also mortated and led short lives in human form. The only Vampires left were most of the Darklings and those of the Hive of the Beast. Less than five thousand Vampires walked the blessed dark, feeding upon the blood of the living.

Few of the Vampire Blood Royalty survived. Orphaeus Cygnus remained the High Prince of the Beasts, happy in his position and undesiring of any greater responsibility. Rebekah and Mephistopheles had never sought power within the Great Hive and had no desire to rise to power now that the King was dead and the Queen had passed into the Tarmian realm. Thaddeus Brannon had retaken his name of Dmitri and had disappeared into the Blue Ridge Mountains to mourn his departed lover. The only one left was the true heir to the Throne of Blood...Cadmus Pariah. The newly-born Vampire, aged to a certain regal beauty, had achieved all that he had dreamt, save for the death of his mother, Kelat. He had outlived his former master, the Apostate, and risen to power within what was now called the New Hive. Humanity was his for the taking, a resplendent and neverending feast.

But he was not King. After Thiyennen, there could be no other king and, as long as Queen Kelat lived, the leader of the New Hive was considered a regent of the night. It rankled Cadmus, but he was barely concerned with this technicality because he knew Kelat would never return to the world of humans and Upyr. He was truly the ruler of the New Hive, but his title had to reflect his position on the throne. A coterie of Darklings and Beasts convened with Cadmus, despite their fear and hatred of him, and they decided upon the title of Plenipotentiary, the Ruler of All. Cadmus accepted this cognomen and rose to power over all the New Hive, his dark eyes watching the Upyr with dread magicks.

Still, he fed upon the Blood of the New Hive, reminding them of the Sanguinem Mittat and who was their eternal master. But he mostly took humans for food now, and basked in the ability to eat and drink the vast banquet of human food. He was more of a sybarite than ever before, and his veiled castle home was the center of the pleasure palace he called the world.

I've been trawling through 'The Augury of Gideon,' checking to see if everything fit together okay. It seems to be, but there were parts of it that make me extreeeeeemely uncomfortable. I'm not certain how I can change this, but change it must. This part, though, I'm kind of proud of.

Thiyennen continued. “The mighty Cadmus Pariah, how you’ve come down in the world. What once was great is now a vessel of pain stretched across my sense of purity and vengeance. I will never go so low as to call you my son. You are the mutated afterbirth of my nighttime issue. That is all you ever were and all you shall ever be. Kelat might call you son, but I call you a demon sent straight from Hell.”Cadmus raised his head and looked Thiyennen in the eye. “You’ve never tasted Hell, O King.” And with that, he spit dragon fire right into Thiyennen’s face. Thiyennen didn’t even get a chance to scream before his head was eaten completely away by the acidic dragon fire. Cadmus remembered the day in the desert when that almost happened to him, and how his biological mother Kelat had nursed him back to health in spite of his vow to destroy her. Now he wished she would find him and save him again. Then Cadmus laughed, truly laughed. When all is said and the day is done, the only thing a person wants when it boils right down to it is his mother. Cadmus couldn’t believe what he was thinking and feeling, and he soon found himself in hysterics, laughing and crying all at once, succumbing to the tsunami of emotions that he’d long abandoned in a field of unmentionable abuses. There he was, naked and strapped to a wheel-shaped rack, staring down at his headless father while the dragon fire continued to sputter and spit around the corpse’s shoulders, and all he wanted was his mother. Cadmus’ sense of absurdity had reached a breaking point and he screamed with the emotions that it unleashed. The scream ended with his merry laughter filling the torture chamber.

Yes, Cadmus begins feeling true emotions. He has to for the story to progress, and he finds himself in situations that demand an emotional reaction. This is where I have the problem. I've never had to worry about Cadmus and intimacy. It was only a means to an end whenever it happened, and I always skirted the subject just enough to make the point, but not go there. I have to this time, and I did. But when I reread it, I can hardly look at the words.

This is bloody frustrating, and I don't know how to fix it. Or if I even should. I just can't imagine anyone reading this and...liking it. It's so wrong on so many levels, I babble incoherently to my computer screen and the animals about how horrid the predicament is. I'm about ready to trash the whole damned book and start from scratch. I don't really want to do that, though.

Since I could not sleep, instead of lying in the dark staring at my own thoughts, I decided to do a little proofing of the Cadmus stories. There is a striking thread throughout the narratives, which is Cadmus' eternal gaze that absorbed everything around him. And I remembered something striking. I had not thought about it for years because I no longer have that letter that was written to me by a complete stranger who felt compelled to offer up his own surreal experience like some strange gift. It was as though he was looking for comfort or absolution for sins I doubt he ever committed.

In the letter he documented a meeting just like the ones I've written about in the stories. He was drawn in by the gaze and felt simultaneously drained and mesmerise. And not a word was ever spoken. I was so haunted by this account, it apparently became a central part of Cadmus' deep demeanor. I wish I still had that letter. I can just remember the gist of the story now, but I do remember one bit from the letter, verbatim: "He just stared at me and through me at the same time. While everyone else was having a good time, he seemed to absorb it all, but was strangely unaffected by it. To this day, it kind of creeps me out, but I'll never forget the experience." I can't even remember the name of the letter's author, but I do remember that.

It's funny how some true things just inexplicably end up in a work of fiction. Not funny ha ha, but funny what the hell. This was one of those things that lodged itself into my subconscious and was recycled into nightmares and a kind of fascination. It certainly has defined Cadmus on pretty much every level.

He who defileth All Things with a bitter tongue that rests sweetly upon the ears of the Tree Child shall take a portion and portions thereof into his service. The rites of Illumination shall be abandoned for a salvation promised only by eternal enslavement. I behold the passing of the Old Ways, that they fall into disarray by way of Dark Magicks and the dividing power of the Tuthalidon! I see a priest of these dread arcana, the mark of Tuthalidon carved and secreted away deep within a heart that exists only to devour. I behold a moon drenched in the blood of martyrs…the Blood of monsters. Blood spilt upon the altars of the Wise. The devastation of oblivion shall encompass all lands and twist all language. In the night shall the lost ones wander, pulling into their fold the immortal and doomed. I see the depth of his endless eyes, searching searching forever searching, seeking out the damned, cleansing Eterah and dressing her in the raiment of abominations.

~From ‘Prophecies of the Augury – Gideon and the Veil of Ages,’ written and compiled by Cadmus Pariah

If all goes as planned August will be the month of the release of the second installment of The Vampire Relics, entitled The Blood Crown. With breathtaking cover art drawn by Art Center’s Amanda Cook and with plans for a for a future kindle, we here at Fey Publishing is very excited about the story and wonderment to come. Unlike The Chalice, The Blood Crown will focus primarily on the two vampires Cadmus Pariah and his arch-nemesis Orphaeus Cygnus as they travel by foot from Jerusalem to Rome to retrieve the second mysterious relic that is sacred to the Vampire Great Hive. Throughout the story, we will learn more of the ancient alien Elfin Tarmi, and their role in human development throughout the long ages.

We will also learn how Cadmus came to learn of the Blood Crown and the horror he enacted on another to acquire this knowledge. Not for the light of heart, The Blood Crown is a necessary and important story that connects both the first and the last of the The Vampire Relics trilogy. We hope you enjoy it.

“And, um, Anthony Hopkins plays a character called Hannibal Lecter. Anthony Hopkins was trained by Christopher Fettes. Christopher Fettes trained me. [Hopkins] loosely based his mannerisms and his speech patterns and his look of Hannibal Lecter on this teacher. So, that was my mentor.”

Cadmus marveled at how both human and Vampire alike were drawn to Gethsymonae as much as they were pulled into him. Gethsymonae’s ability to throw glamour upon another came like breathing, and there was no struggle, only the steady flow of precious, sacred blood from humans and Blood from their Kith and Kin. Cadmus was deeply impressed with Gethsymonae’s willingness to drink Vampire Blood, and he allowed himself the luxury of climax when he saw his Vampire lover take a Vampire and render him asunder. To see such a sweet and unassuming creature suddenly become so wonderfully deadly was enough to overwhelm Cadmus for nights on end, and this sublime paradox continued night after night.

Cadmus had met Gethsymonae in a garden in the night, walking a hedge labyrinth by the river, and singing the very song of desire with that impossibly stunning voice. Gethsymonae warbled rather than sang, and Cadmus could not resist the presence of the Vampire there beneath the burgeoning moon. He pondered the Vampire with the aim to slaughter, taking both flesh and bone to offer up to the inevitability of the All, and to further decorate his Harming Tree. But, once he heard the Vampire speak, and he knew Gethsymonae’s name, he instead took the younger Vampire as his lover, the first he had had since his marriage to Maria, his foretold Garden of Blood. Now he tended a different garden, this one steeped in mystery and danger. Unbearably beautiful, just like himself, this other, this Gethsymonae smiled furtively and held Cadmus’ gaze for hours on end. Gethsymonae’s full pink lips would curve into that incomprehensible smile and Cadmus was lost to his lover. He surrendered to Gethsymonae, something he had never done before. It was on that night that Cadmus began to do something unimaginable; Cadmus began to grow his hair.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my post about not belonging. I actually meant to turn off comments, but forgot like an idjit. I figured I wouldn't know what to say to anyone. And, really, I don't. The only thing I have to say about the situation is that I left the group last night. I'll just go along my merry way, alone. The whole thing is kind of making me a laugh a little, because I do feel a bit like a pariah, so I understand how Cadmus is as much a part of me as he is his anchor, Barry. I've placed my unbelonging on this hapless character, and made him vicious and malignant partially as a result.

I'm watching the fourth season of LOST off and on today, in between getting ready for major errands tomorrow. One of the things I'm planning on doing today is waxing my eyebrows. That is a Major Task, especially since I've let them go for so long. I'm about to become Unibrow, which is unacceptable. Why my mother had to give me her Sasquatch gene is beyond me.

Oh, and I'm so excited. I'm getting my hair trimmed for the first time in over two years tomorrow! I'm gonna get all the split ends taken off and have my hair shaped to accommodate my super long bangs, in an effort to get it all the same length eventually. I'll take pictures for posterity's sake once the deed is done. And, on Friday, I'm heading to Asheville, to the Gnomen Garden to see if the Christopher Mello who created this garden is my Chris from middle school. After that, Steph and I are off to get our long-intended tattoos. She's getting one to honour her father, and I'm getting one of this:

It's gonna be on my left hand, and it's gonna cause a stir because of the cross. People will wonder if it's upside-down, if I've finally converted to xtianity like most of my friends have, what does the crazy zig-zag ending in an arrow mean? They can wonder all they want. All that's important is that this symbol remain close to me no matter where I am, how old I grow, or what the Universe has in store for me. I could lose all my music and files the day after I get the tat, and there would still be a sense of permanence to the greatest inspiration I have ever encountered. When I am writing, I can glance down at my typing hands and see the symbol, and know that I am on the right track. That's all that matters to me. So I am going to do it while I have the chance.

I'm off to get a different box for Barry's stuff. The box I have is way too big and I know I'll be charged for dimension as well as weight, so I'm trying to be as economical as I possibly can. I wrote a letter to accompany the stuff, and I was hoping to get some feedback in a private forum, but that didn't work out like I had planned, so poop. I'm hoping the letter is okay and that it'll bring a grin to that Vampiric face of his.

With a decidedly feminine name (altered to appear feminine in print, that is) and a deeply androgynous appearance, Gethsymonae pours into my mind like cool water from a hidden spring. The strangeness of this character, anchored to the actor whom I wish to play Cadmus on film and particularly to one of his other movie roles, overwhelms me right now.

S/he swirls around Cadmus like a newborn memory, once lost to the void that was his endless soul. Cadmus sees himself in Gethsymonae and experiences love for the first time, as a result. It doesn't matter what gender Gethsymonae is, Cadmus has always taken what he wanted from the Great and New Hives, regardless of gender. The same will apply to his love affair with the peat-haired, ice-eyed Darkling. S/He will be bound to Cadmus in every way, but it will be a willing bond and Cadmus will exhibit a never-before-seen tenderness as a result of his affection for the Vampire. For Cadmus, Gethsymonae is beautiful in every way, manifesting the very Song of God in his soul. He is powerless in the presence of Gethsymonae, but that powerlessness is glorious in its presence. And how will Cadmus express his affection for Gethsymonae by way of the Harming Tree? No harm can come to the equivocal Vampire, no suffering shall knit that seamless brow. He must find some other way, some significant expression by which to clearly paint his psyche for Gethsymonae's pleasure.

Whatever his choice may be, something tells me it shall be divine and awash in Blood.

It had been well onto 1500 years since Cadmus had let his hair grow out, keeping it clean-shaven ever since his initiation by the Apostate into the very heart of Darkness. It was then that he had used the blood of his teacher’s entrails as ritual unguent.

The time it took for his hair to grow in and grow as long as it once had been so many centuries before was almost two years. What was so strange to Cadmus was that it did not grow in black as it once had been when he scraped his head clean of it as Nissius lay in the gore of his own karma before Cadmus’ bare feet; instead, it grew in grey, the colour of age. Of course, Cadmus had aged over the years, being a living entity who took on many years during his song of the Augury with Kallum McCreary, but his face was still relatively young. It surprised him that his hair did not match his face in the least.

But it carried its own strange beauty, framing his youthful face in an almost angelic way.

I'm stuck on The Last Acolyte. My heart just isn't in it. There are so many other Cadmus stories I want to be writing, one of which where he actually lets his hair grow out as a part of some arcane ritual. Maybe that will become The Braid in my list of short story titles. It had always been my idea that Cadmus would allow his hair to grow back at least once, since he does indeed shave it and has ever since he was initiated into the Darkness by the Apostate. Now with seeing Straw, I'm just really super inspired. I just need to get it through my head that I don't have to finish one story before I can start another. That's always been a thing with me. The Chalice, The Blood Crown, and The Augury of Gideon were all written linearly. I wonder if that's normal now. Either way, I think I'm setting aside The Last Acolyte and turning my attention to The Braid for a little while. Then again, I'm also keen on exploring The Witness Tree, where the first artifact of the Apostate is introduced.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm thinking about it too much. I'd leave it alone, but I feel I've left it alone for too long already.

I know he's playing a completely different character here ~ Straw in a movie called The Reckoning, but Tom Hardy has captured the pure essence of Cadmus Pariah 100%, funky wig notwithstanding. Unbelievable. Where is my bloody movie?

Throughout the planet Earth there are hidden artifacts fashioned by the Apostate for his own dark amusements. These artifacts were sometimes chanced upon by hapless humans who fell slave to their magicks. One such artifact became known as The Shroud. Its sole purpose was to show whomever was unfortunate to don the accursed cloth a world filled with death, disease, and the inescapable inevitability of enslavement and imprisonment in a world so terrible as to make the wearer and all those about whom the wearer told The Shroud gabble with sorrow and madness.

This was the first of the Apostate's dabblings into magick solely for magick's sake. And it was the first about which Cadmus Pariah learnt after his apotheosis into the role of Plenipotentiary of the New Hive. He discovered that it belonged to a human child of misfortune who had lost everything to The Shroud. Her name was Shirley Manning and she had lost her children, her husband, her very way of life to the lies told by The Shroud.

Cadmus suspected that taking The Shroud away from Shirley Manning would most assuredly kill her, but that really was not his concern. He had made it his mission to collect and perhaps destroy the Apostate's final stain up this planet.

And there were others.

There were the Crystals of Khemeth, quartz stones created out of the tears of bound Tarmi. When worn, the Crystals would cause the wearer to cry uncontrollably and produce even more crystals, thus compounding the sorrow perpetrated by the original magicks fashioned in the dungeons of the Apostate. The Dagger of Aramathea, fashioned out of stone that no longer even existed in the bones of the Earth and, if plunged into the flesh of a mortal being, that being would be transformed to salt for all eternity, a poisonous salt that would taint all around it. The Apostate could have easily poisoned the oceans of planet Earth with the corpse of one murdered soul. There was the Spiritus Wine that, when drunk, the drinker would die of insomnia and its ensuing madness. One such family, dwelling in the heart of Italy, had fallen victim to the legacy of this wine, believing it to be the very blood of Christ as they took, in their ignorance, the libation of the Saviour.

And there were so many more, dotted along the surface of the Pariah's playground of night. It was his intention to collect them all and, if not eradicate their existence from the knowledge of Humankind, add their terrible power to his Harming Tree. With such dark magick at his fingertips, Cadmus Pariah could once again reclaim the invincibility that had once almost been his as the bane to the Great Hive.

This would be Cadmus Pariah's final vengeance upon the mummified relic that had once been the greatest sorcerer on Earth.

I have had zero motivation to do anything in the past week or so. I think it has a lot to do with my disability hearing in front of the judge this past Monday. The lawyer didn't seem very confidant after the almost 2-hour ordeal. If the judge rules against me, then the lawyer says he will appeal, but it will be an uphill battle from there. So, great. I've had thoughts of suicide because I can't continue to be a burden on Aunt Tudi and I can't find work that I am physically or mentally able to do. What am I supposed to do? I'm a useless person and would be better off dead. So that's where my thoughts have been lingering and keeping me from writing.

On Facebook, I was befriended by Tom Hardy. I'm pretty sure it's not the real Tom Hardy, but you just never know about things like this. I have a perfect example: my relationship with Barry Andrews, which began online with doubts about who he really was until I spoke with him on the telephone. Shortly after I was befriended by "Tom," someone posted a link to a clip from Sergeant Slaughter: My Big Brother, where Tom Hardy is naked ~ full frontal. I was horrified. Of course, I didn't click the link because I never wanted to see Tom Hardy naked. He's aligned with the character of Cadmus Pariah. There's a fair amount of modesty that surrounds that affiliation. Shortly after the link was posted, "Tom Hardy" poked me. Gawd. No. I backed far away from the embarrassing situation and began to lurk on FB, claiming to be Woefully Horrified. Which I was. I still am. And why? I opened a link in an email from a friend and it led me to that movie clip, so I accidentally saw it anyway. I've been pouring bleach on my eyes ever since.

I had a long bout with insomnia and migraines. My mind raced with snippets of songs and commercial jingles until my head began to burst with pain. This lasted over a week, and it caused me to experience Space Madness while I was up during the day. My Lyrica prescription finally arrived and I was then able to sleep without being plagued by a racing mind. I slept over nine hours last night. 'Twas glorious!

Tomorrow, I'm going to force myself to open up my The Harming Tree file, and write at least 1000 words. Cadmus shadows my every move on a psychic level. B has felt it too. After over 10 years of this happening, I wasn't surprised when it happened today. I was speaking of Cadmus to Aunt Tudi earlier today and I immediately got an email from B. I can't count how many times this has happened, as it is innumerable. So yeah, I need to feed the demon so he'll quieten down. B was needing the jpegs of his Vile Homunculus. He said the creature had work to do. Seems his own demon demands feeding too.